The problem with saving animals from extinction is that so many of them are also scary, threatening, and nihilistic. I can’t empathize with them. I have no feeling of kinship with these fellow life forms. These particular animals seem to have been designed by nature specifically to evoke this reaction from me, so I don’t feel bad about it.

The bees of the world are dying. All of them. This is not something new. But now the bee plague – “colony collapse disorder,” which is either caused by a virus or a pesticide or a fungus or a combination of all three, no one really knows – is starting to raise serious concerns.